Do we need technology or do we want technology?

What is technology? What is the difference between a want and a need? Why is there a difference between a want and a need? Can’t there just be wants (and not needs)?

My inspiration for the OP is the IPhone and thinking back to 1995 when we first had Windows 95, AOL, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo… and twelve years later we have Digg, YouTube, Wikipedia, and the SDMB, and we are finally Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. And now we are off into the future again with the IPhone in hand.

My inspiration for the Debate. In another thread about the IPhone, Dopers seemed to gang up on me. I say the IPhone is not a status symbol. Someone who has a cellphone says the IPhone is a status symbol. By that logic, wasn’t any cellphone once a status symbol?! Yes, some people don’t have an IPhone. And, yes, some people don’t even have a cellphone.

I get really angry when it seems people are attacking me. They attack me - and say I’m brainwashed. If I’m sitting here at my computer writing about the IPhone and I’m brainwashed… what does that make the geeks sitting in line at the Apple store?!! Why do you say that I’m brainwashed? You don’t say that people who are standing in line are brainwashed. You single out me.

You either single me out or you single out a group of your fellow man. Yeah, so, those marketers brainwashed you Kozmik for being excited about the IPhone. Or, those marketers infiltrated the brains of those fools in line at Apple. I’m sick and tired of this.

You could have a little glimmer of hope… that everyone will proudly show pictures of their newborn baby to kind strangers on their IPhone.
You could have one shred of light… that everyone will use Digg and YouTube, and transform the news media.
You could have the slightest view… that everyone will find music, movies, pictures, and news to brighten their lives.
If only everyone had an IPhone. If only they were cheaper. If only their was competion. You know there will be competitors, you know they will be cheaper, and you know everyone will be carrying around an electronic gizmo in their pocket that will change their day if not the world.

So I’ve had it. I don’t want a rant. I want a debate. I got a call from a loved one while composing this, and I had to stop. It was a ray of sunshine in my life. Things are so simple yet so complex. Humanity and technology. Or are they simple? Or complex? When I think about it, I say technology trancends humanity but it is we who create technology. Do we need technology or do we want technology?

What do you class as technology? Fire? The wheel? Clothes?

Yes, we need technology. What starts out as as luxury item soon becomes a necessity. At some point you become so dependent on that technology that you find yourself disadvantaged without it. I had graduated college (95) before I have seriously used the internet or cell phones. I would be unable to function in my job without them now.

We need technology to do the things we want.

You live in an western industrialized country. Unless you are pretty far down the ladder economically it is all wants. Your “needs” are addressed and it is now wants. That is why people like to live in western industrialized countries. It is why people risk crossing the Arizona desert or cram them selves in to dangerously crowded boats and head to Florida or the canary islands.

Don’t know yet, but your answers seem intuitively correct.

Power (a fuel source, electricity, solar power ect.)

Mechanics (why can’t automobile wheels store energy while you drive?)

Utility (water resistant microfibers)
I suppose what I am getting as is: you take things like fire, the wheel, and clothes - you improve on them - and that’s technology.

It’s complicated and not very efficient with mechanical systems, as I understand; electric and I think hybrid cars often do store energy while braking.

And yes, we need technology. Try feeding 6 billion + people without modern agriculture and the roads and vehicles to get the food where it’s needed and an infrastructure and economy that can support all that.

We don’t need anything per se. Need only becomes an issue when trying to obtain a goal. We need oxygen because it’s crucial to the goal to staying alive. There might be an alternative to oxygen some day but we’ll need one or the other to meet the goal. So, for some, having a certan technology may well be a need. It all depends on their goals. The whole need versus want issue is then revealed to be just a judgement on the goals (aka wants).

OK. You got called names, somewhere, based on your views of the iPhone. As the prompt for a debate, that is fine.
Just don’t let it become the focus of the debate.
That was there; this is here. Your topic is interesting without either the history or the emotion behind what instigated it.

I suspect that this is not an either/or question. There are a bit more than 6 billion of us cluttering up the planet’s surface at the moment. If we have any desire to see more than a few thousand of us survive, we need technology. It is only technology that keeps the infrastructure that provides the means by which most of us get fed.

However, we clearly also want technology. Some want certain levels of technology more than others want certain levels of technology. The Amish are quite happy with one level of technology, not because they oppose technology for its own sake, but because they have looked at the way technology is used to co-opt human values and the way in which it can disrupt families, and they prefer to accept changes more slowly than Silicone Valley geeks do.

Is the iPhone a status symbol? Sure. At $600, it is currently a luxury that fewer people can afford than want it. That is pretty much the definition of a status symbol–it is a symbol that one had sufficient disposable income to spend money on one device that (currently) replaces a few other devices using new and innovative technology, but which is not required for survival.

A computer in one’s home in 1981 was hardly a necessary device. It was, effectively, a status symbol (although not for the same class of people for whom Seiko watches and multiple diamond necklaces are status symbols. On the other hand, by 2001, I could not do my job, (the same basic job I had in 1981), without having a computer in my home. At that point, for me and for people who had similar forms of employment, it was no longer a status symbol, but a necessary tool. On the other hand, I still know people who live rich, fullfilled lives who do not own a computer (or even know how to use the computer in the public library). It is necessary for me, but it is not a requirement for life in the way that food or air are required for life.

If we do not want to gather food from bushes and eat carrion by pulling it apart with our teeth, we need technology. However, the level of technology we need may be quite distinct from the technology we desire.

That fact that a particular piece of technology is originally a status symbol does not determine whether it will continue to be a status symbol.

Nitpick: According to US Census estimates, we’re actually closer to 7 billion than 6 billion at present, with midyear 2007 population something over 6.6 billion. Expected to hit 7 billion within the next 5 years.

There’s rather a large excluded middle in the “status symbol vs. necessity” debate. I don’t need my computer, or my DVDs, or my library of books. But, none of them are status symbols, either. It’s only a status symbol if a part of its purpose is to make you look good by virtue of it’s rarity or unaffordability; this has nothing to do with necessity.

An item can be both a necessity and a status symbol, too. Your average luxury car would qualify, if it’s not a spare car.

Humans evolutionary advantage is out brain. WHile other animals develop defenses and other aspects to propogate their species organically, humans tend to do it through invention and innovation. We don’t run fast, we don’t have powerful jaws, we don’t have venomous fangs, etc. But we can mimic almost anything to maintain an advantage in the natural world. So yes, we need technology, it’s our evolutionary trump card.

Humans are THE animals having an instinctive drive to invent. Technology is to humans as running is to horses. “Want” and “need” puts the whole issue on too advanced and subtle a footing. We are the technology animal.

It’s a whole different issue, whether people want or need Iphones.

I don’t think “Do we need X?” is a meaningful question by itself; you have to ask, “Do we need X in order to do Y?”

Y might be “live” or “do my job” or “live at the level of comfort I am accustomed to” or “keep from going crazy” or whatever.
And if there is nothing that X enables you to do that you could still do without X, perhaps by some other means, then you can’t say you need X. So a particular technological item, like an iPhone, is certainly not a need if there’s nothing you can do with it that you could also do without it.

Sure, the way the job evolved to function. But we don’t really need any specific technology…you only need it because others have it. For instance, if e-mail and cell phones had never been invented, you would use another way to communicate. Business hummed along well before either of those technologies were ever thought of.

Ancedote After three family members got on T-Moble we went on a vacation. We went to Las Vegas to visit my uncle. We went to one of the malls. We were in two pairs. And we mutually got lost.

If only my “rich” uncle had a cell phone, that wouldn’t have done any good - he couldn’t have reached his mother.
If only me and my uncle had cell phones - we wouldn’t be able to contact the rest of our party.
Only if all four of us had a cell phone could we have saved an hour looking, waiting, in the mall.

I have had family members get separated at conventions, amusement parks, fairs, and other situations. Not once have I required a cell phone to get the family back together. (To date, I have not even encountered that situation since a couple of us have finally gotten cells.)

Since carrying a cell phone, I have reported at least three injury accidents and two downed trees on power lines. Prior to that, I have reported such events by seeking a pay phone or a neighboring house to borrow the phone. Did the cell make it easier to report the incidents more swiftly? Absolutely. Would they have gone unreported had I not had a cell or would civilization have fallen if I had failed to get through to the responsible parties? No.

So, it is a useful device–it might even reduce aggravation to a serious degree. However, it has not been necessary for survival.

Wrong.

He’s not wrong. To make a cellphone necessary for survival requires contriving the situation. With that approach, there can be moments where a pair of cuticle scissors are necessary for survival because they were used to save someone’s life. If some meteorological phenomenon made cellphones impossible tomorrow, humanity (or at least humanity living in the developed nations) would be inconvenienced, but will survive.

Anyway, anyone who sneers at technology needs to spend some time naked on an arctic island.

OK. So the guy who fell part-way down a cliff when I was a kid and saved himself by using his shoelaces to secure himself to something on the slope until he was rescued has established that shoelaces are a necessary technology, regardless whether they are ever superseded by Velcro™ or some other technology.

Horse-drawn and ox-drawn farm equipment is necessary technology because people have lived or died based on their ability to use such equipment to farm their land.

I had thought this was a serious discussion in which you were seeking to explore the differences between technology that was wanted or needed. If you are only looking for justification for the position you took in some other thread while not actually considering the logic behind your own position, this is going to get tedious very quickly.

Have fun. Stay civil.